Who Runs the International System?

Power and the Staffing of the United

Nations Secretariat
Paul Novosad and Eric Werker
Abstract
National governments frequently pull strings to get their citizens appointed to senior
positions in international institutions. We examine, over a 60 year period, the nationalities
of the most senior positions in the United Nations Secretariat, ostensibly the worlds
most representative international institution. The results indicate which nations are
successful in this zero-sum game, and what national characteristics correlate with
power in international institutions. The most overrepresented countries are small, rich
democracies like the Nordic countries. Statistically, democracy, investment in diplomacy,
and economic/military power are predictors of senior positions, even after controlling
for the UN staffing mandate of competence and integrity. National control over the
United Nations is remarkably sticky; however the influence of the United States has
diminished as US ideology has shifted away from its early allies. In spite of the decline
in US influence, the Secretariat remains pro-American relative to the world at large.

JEL Codes: F5, F53, F59

www.cgdev.org

Working Paper 376

September 2014

Who Runs the International System? Power and the Staffing of the
United Nations Secretariat
Paul Novosad
Dartmouth College
Eric Werker
Harvard Business School

We are grateful to Uggi Lee, Daniel Lim, Ian Tomb, Vikram Viswanathan,
and Edward Zhong for diligent research assistance. Kristy Buzard, Michael
Clemens, Christina Davis, Jeff Friedman, Julia Gray, Brian Greenhill,
Diego Hernandez, Tana Johnson, Peter Katzenstein, Michael Levi, Beth
Simmons, several staff members of the United Nations, and in particular
Ilyana Kuziemko provided helpful input, comments and suggestions, as
did seminar participants at Columbia University, the Political Economy of
International Organizations conference at Princeton, and the Economics
of National Security meeting at NBER. The first stage of data gathering
for this project was funded by the National Bureau of Economic
Researchs Economics of National Security program to Kuziemko and
Werker, and Werker thanks the Harvard Business School Division of
Research and Faculty Development for continuing support. The usual
disclaimer applies.
Paul Novosad and Eric Werker. 2014. Who Runs the International System? Power and
the Staffing of the United Nations Secretariat. CGD Working Paper 376. Washington,
DC: Center for Global Development.
http://www.cgdev.org/publication/who-runs-international-system-power-and-staffunited-nations-secretariat-working

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Foreword by Vijaya Ramachandran

I am delighted to sponsor this working paper by Paul Novosad and Eric Werker. The paper
is a provocative and interesting contribution to CGDs ongoing work in the area of global
governance. Novosad and Werkers paper adds to this area of research by carefully
examining the influence of nations at the United Nations. They find that democracy,
investment in diplomacy, and economic power are predictors of senior staff positions at the
UN, even after controlling for various factors. This suggests that nations may view influence
in multilateral institutions as a complement to traditional unilateral diplomacy. Even though
US influence at the UN has steadily declined, the authors find that the UN Secretariat
remains US-friendly. Werker and Novosads paper sheds light on the effectiveness of the
multilateral system and the balance of political, economic and other factors that drive key
decisions within this system.

Introduction

This paper examines the nationality of the most senior officials in the United Nations Secretariat over the last sixty years, with the goal of understanding which nations have been
successful in controlling this institution, and what factors have allowed them to do so. There
is intense competition among nations over the staffing of these positions, and once in these
positions, there is evidence that officials act in the interests of their home nations.
Because of the contested nature and scarcity of these positions, Secretariat staffing data
can be used to inform at least two significant discussions. The most direct application is
to understand who runs the United Nations itself. While the United Nations is arguably
the worlds most representative international organization, it was set up by a particular set
of nations, the victors of the second world war, with the goal of sustaining a certain kind
of world order. Our staff nationality data provide a time-varying proxy for the importance
of each nation at the United Nations. Our results suggest that the post-war balance of
control at the United Nations has been largely sustained, in spite of significant changes in
the balance of global economic power over this time.
A second application is to treat the staffing of international institutions as an outcome of
the distribution of power across nations. According to John Mearsheimer, realists maintain
that international institutions are basically a reflection of the distribution of power in the
world (1994). There is a substantial literature on the measurement of power (Nye, 2011b),
and a vigorous debate on whether power is even measurable (Guzzini, 2013). By identifying
the distribution of positions in the Secretariat, we provide an objective measure across all
nations of a zero-sum dimension of power, the power to control international institutions
(Bachrach and Baratz, 1962; Barnett and Duvall, 2005), that appears to be of significant
concern to governments around the world. This method of comparing power across nations
addresses some of the critiques in the literature on the empirical measurement of power,

particularly the critique that a focus on military capability is too narrow in scope. Our
approach therefore brings together two traditions of scholarship that are usually seen as
incongruent: the measurement of power, and the treatment of power as multidimensional.
The Secretariat is staffed by nationals of the United Nations 193 member states. In
theory, the Secretariat is to be staffed according to the competence and integrity of individual
candidates, with an additional mandate of achieving broad representation of nations, but in
practice the top positions are highly contested in an intensely political process. The struggle
for influence over the appointment of the most recent Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, was
widely covered, with Chinas growing global influence an important factor in the selection
of a candidate from Asia (Thant and Scott, 2007). Bans appointed top management team
was, according to the Financial Times, dominated by officials from powerful countries
(2007). Among them was then-U.S. ambassador to Indonesia Lynn Pascoe who was to head
the political affairs department despite other countries objections that he was a State
Department guy (Turner, 2007). Three years later, when Briton and former Blair cabinet
member Valerie Amos was appointed under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs, a
source to the Guardian newspaper observed: This is a massively significant job, one of
the top five at the U.N. [...] It would be unthinkable for Britain not to have one of the
top five jobs (Watt, 2010). Competition over other high-level positions occurs blatantly as
governments support the candidacy of their own nationals (The Economist, 1989).
Once secure in their position, staff have the ability to influence affairs in the interests of
their home nation. The United Nations reported in its own newsletter, The United Nations
has increasingly become a political arena where high officials engage in political give-andtake and where interest groups lobby for their countrys interests... Political appointees are
frequently not loyal to the United Nations, but to their respective governments, upon which
they depend for further reward or punishment (Finger and Hanan, 1980). Informal spheres
of national control appear to be a feature of many international institutions, including the

European Commission and NATO (Kleine, 2013), and increasing evidence suggests that
the national identities of bureaucrats affect the decision-making of institutions (Kaja and
Werker, 2010; Johns, 2007).
We assembled data on the most senior positions in the Secretariat (approximately 80 out
of some 43,000 total staff members today, United Nations 2012), as published in the U.N.
Yearbook from 1947-2007. We researched the nationalities of these senior officials to generate
time series data on the countries controlling the executive arm of the United Nations. This
dataset allows us to analyze how positions are allocated, and to use the allocation of positions
as a window into the influence, or power, of states in the international system.
We introduce the notion of excess representation in the Secretariat, which is the number
of senior Secretariat positions held by a country, over and above what would be expected if
positions were held in proportion to countries populations. Ranking countries by excess representation, we find that the top positions are dominated by rich democracies: the five most
overrepresented countries in the Secretariat are Sweden, Norway, Finland, New Zealand, and
Ireland. The United States is overrepresented, and China is significantly underrepresented.
We then test for the factors that predict a countrys representation in the Secretariat. We
first model the staffing mandate of the United Nations, which requires staff to be selected on
criteria of competence and integrity, with some regard for equal geographical distribution.
We proxy competence with the national stock of university graduates and integrity with a
measure of freedom from corruption. Both variables are significant predictors in the expected
direction, as is the assessment of dues to the United Nations. We next examine additional
factors, including total GDP, per capita wealth, military spending, investment in diplomacy,
and democracy. With the inclusion of these additional variables, we find that diplomacy,
wealth, GDP and democracy are all significant predictors of influence.1 The most robust of
1

As we describe in the results, it is difficult to disentangle military expenditure, human capital, assessment
of dues to the United Nations and GDP, because they are so highly correlated with each other. We report
this result as GDP not because we think GDP is a more important factor than the other three, but because

these is diplomacy, suggesting that countries can invest in institutional power in a manner
that is at least partially orthogonal to military investment and economic power. Conditional
on that investment, rich countries and democracies are more successful in exerting their
power overseas.
We extend our method to take alliances between nations into account. If two countries
have similar preferences over international policies, they may benefit from having each other
in powerful positions. In order to capture the direct and indirect power (i.e. power held by
allies) of a country, we construct a measure of national influence that takes into account the
similarity of preferences to other influential nations, as proxied by similarity of U.N. General
Assembly voting records (Gartzke, 1998).2
Finally, we use these measures to describe the influence of the United States in the Secretariat over the last 60 years. We find that the share of Americans in senior positions has
been declining since the 1960s. These senior positions have not been replaced by growing
middle income countries, but by citizens of other rich democracies. While the world population share of Western Europe and its offshoots fell from 18% in 1965 to 13% in 2005, their
share of Secretariat positions remained largely constant, falling from 46% in 1965 only to
45% in 2005.
If American and European ideologies were the same as they were in 1950, the United
States would not have experienced any real loss of influence at the Secretariat, as its lost
positions were taken up by its 1950 allies. However, by our measures, the ideologies of the
United States and its 1950 allies have diverged, especially since the 1980s, so the placement
of old allies in former U.S. positions has led to a substantial loss in American influence at
the United Nations.
These findings both reinforce and add nuance to Keohanes 1984 notion that international
it is the most commonly used proxy for the large set of indicators highly correlated with GDP.
2
The methodology supports measures of alliance other than voting affinity, such as common membership
in intergovernmental organizations. The latter yields broadly similar results in our applications.

institutions can outlast the circumstances determining their creation. The United Nations
Secretariat continues to reflect the membership of the U.S.-led alliance that was instrumental
in its creation, in spite of that alliances declining economic and military dominance of the
world. But it no longer represents American ideology; American control over the United
Nations is now constrained by the allies with which it built the institution.
These findingsas well as the broader methodology of measuring the outcome of diplomatic struggle by looking at staffing outcomescontribute to the extensive literature on
power in international relations (reviewed in Baldwin 2013).
The search for objective measures of power that were comparable across nations goes back
at least to the eighteenth century (Gulick 1955, cited in Baldwin 2013). These capabilitybased measures became ever more complex, as reflected in Morgenthau (1948), culminating in
Clines formula (1975), which was a nonlinear combination of population, territory, income,
energy, minerals, manufacturing, food, trade, as well as strategy and will. Clines measure
was used by the U.S. army among others to estimate long run trends in national capabilities
(Tellis et al., 2000).
The capability-based approach has been critiqued by scholars across a number of disciplines, who argue that power is situationally specific and relational and therefore not
objectively measurable(Guzzini, 2009). Contrary to the analysts who count national manpower and resources, Guzzini argues that power is not fungible; what generates power in one
context may not generate power in another. For example, U.S. military resources may not
be usable against friends as they would be against enemies.
A key development in this literature over the last half century has been the description
and categorization of different types of power, including the well-known faces of power
debate. Dahls 1957 seminal study defined a notion of compulsory power as the ability of
A to get B to do what B otherwise would not do. Bachrach and Baratz (1962) argued
that there was a second face of power: the ability to set the agenda. Lukes (1974) added

a third face: the ability to influence others initial preferences. More recently, Barnett and
Duvall (2005)s typology suggests four faces of power. While the traditional capabilitybased approach is well captured by the idea of compulsory power, control over the staffing
of international institutions is closer to Barnett and Duvals Institutional and Productive
Powers: first, the ability to control actors through their diffuse interactions in institutions,
and second, the ability to influence systems of knowledge and discursive practices of broad
and general social scope (Barnett and Duvall, 2005), a fair description of the Secretariats
global agenda-setting role.
With reference to Guzzini (2009), the extent to which an institution like the United
Nations shapes the capabilities of nations at all is in itself an outcome of the distribution of
state power; while our paper does not directly address this aspect of power, the distribution
of influence within the United Nations remains an important arena of struggle, even if it
takes place within a particular structural context that is also of interest.
Analyzing U.N. Secretariat positions may appear similar to the largely realist approach of
ranking states according to their ability to exert compulsory power. However, the association
in the literature between empirical measures of power and the focus on compulsory power is
largely due to the absence of appropriate empirical measures for other dimensions of power.
Multidimensional thinking about power does not obviate the value of measurement, so long
as our outcome is defined clearly.
Our scope is narrow. We focus on the realization of a single dimension of state power:
power in international institutions. We cannot predict whether one nation can exert power
over another in a general sense (e.g. in a war), and our measure is only relevant to the extent
that control over international institutions is perceived by nations as being important.
With that qualification, our method has several desirable characteristics. First, we are
measuring a global outcome that involves nearly all countries in the world, measured with
equal accuracy for all countries. Second, it is a continuous measure, available each year

that we observe the senior staff positions in the Secretariat, allowing us to observe changes
over time. These features give researchers a new opportunity to study the expression of an
arguably increasingly important dimension of power in a panel data setting.
The main weakness of Secretariat representation as a measure of power is that countries
do not equally value the United Nations, so some will exert less effort to secure senior
positions in the organization. While the Secretariat is one of the most representative and
central institutions of the international system, it is clearly not the case that every country
puts in the same level of resources to get staff into key positions. The measure is therefore a
combination of the desire and the ability to influence international outcomes. Nevertheless,
countries that can obtain these positions at a lower cost can be considered more powerful
(Harsanyi 1962, cited in Baldwin 2013), and they are likely to obtain more positions, all
other things equal.3
Besides the work on the United Nations and on power, this paper contributes to several
different literatures. One is the study of how individual nations exert influence within international institutions (Robert and Jacobson, 1973). Much of the recent work in this field
focuses on the role of major powers in shaping outcomes including loans, agendas, concessions, votes, or peacekeeping scope (Allen and Yuen, 2013; Kaja and Werker, 2010; Kilby,
2011; Kleine, 2013; Kuziemko and Werker, 2006; Lim and Vreeland, 2013; Stone, 2004). A
small but growing area of literature takes advantage of the unique institutional environment
of the United Nations to answer broader questions (Gartzke, 1998; Fisman and Miguel, 2007).
Finally, there is a literature on international bureaucrats (e.g. Johns 2007, Urpelainen 2012,
Johnson 2013) that has little direct crossover with this paper, but reinforces the notion that
3

Independent of the preferences of governments, nationals of different countries may have different preferences regarding the desirability of UN Secretariat positions. While this could be a driver of staff composition,
it would not affect the fact that these countries would then have an outsize influence at the UN as a result
of the preferences of their nationals. In fact, we would expect preferences of citizens toward influencing the
UN to be correlated with the preferences of their elected governments. Finally, this effect would go in the
opposite direction of our findings on wealth, because citizens of poor countries would likely value a secure
and well-remunerated UN position more highly than citizens of rich countries.

international bureaucrats retain allegiance to their home countries.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 describes what the Secretariat
does and how it is staffed. Section 3 explains the Secretariat position data and the empirical
specification. Section 4 reports results on the determinants of representation in the Secretariat and the countries that are most overrepresented. Section 5 examines alliances, and
applies our methodology to the case of the United States. Section 6 concludes.

Political Economy of the United Nations Secretariat

2.1

What does the Secretariat do?

The United Nations is the primary international organization responsible for maintaining
peace and facilitating cooperation among nations to resolve issues that require collective
action. The United Nations executive arm is the Secretariat, and it plays a key role in
agenda-setting for the various deliberative U.N. organs, as well as managing global peacekeeping operations. The Secretariat also houses the U.N. Department of Political Affairs,
which is essentially a ministry of foreign affairs with active policy around the world.
The United Nations is organized into six major organs: (i) the General Assembly; (ii) the
Security Council; (iii) the Economic and Social Council; (iv) the defunct Trusteeship Council;
(v) the International Court of Justice; and (vi) the Secretariat. The U.N. Secretariat is the
executive arm of the United Nations. It serves the other bodies of the U.N., administers
operations initiated by those bodies, conducts surveys and research, and communicates with
non-state actors such as media and non-government organizations.
While the decision-making powers of the U.N. reside within its deliberative bodies (the
General Assembly, Economic and Social Council, and Security Council), the Secretariat
plays a key role in implementation and in setting the agenda for those bodies. The content
of the resolutions debated in the deliberative bodies originates in the Secretariat, and many

of the programs are implemented by organs of the Secretariat. The Secretariat is the main
source of economic and political analysis for the General Assembly and Security Council,
and operates political field missions which provide knowledge to those bodies.
The Secretariat prepares the technical assessments that precede peacekeeping operations
and appoints the leaders of peacekeeping operations. These Heads of Mission report directly
to an under-secretary general in the Secretariat, and the deliberative bodies have no further
role in implementation of peacekeeping operations.
Given this range of roles, the Secretariat has more decision-making power than its de
jure status as a member to serve the other organs suggests. In a 1955 address, Secretary
General Dag Hammerskjold described this power as follows:
The United Nations is what member nations made it, but within the limits set
by government action and government cooperation, much depends on what the
Secretariat makes it... [it] has creative capacity. It can introduce new ideas. It
can, in proper forms, take initiatives. It can put before member governments
findings which will influence their actions (Kelen, 1968).4
The staff of the Secretariat are ostensibly international civil servants who serve the goals
of the United Nations rather than their home countries. However, the spoken and unspoken
struggle between nations to place their nationals in senior positions at the United Nations
speaks both to the importance of this creative power of the Secretariat, as well as the
widespread belief that Secretariat staff continue to favor the interests of their home nations.
4

Many were troubled by this normative view of the Secretariat, and perceived Hammerskjold as too
activist a Secretary General; upon his death, he was replaced by U Thant who was expected to guide the
Secretariat to a more subdued role. The case serves to demonstrate that nations place significant importance
on the behavior and composition of the U.N. Secretariat.

10

2.2
2.2.1

Staffing the Secretariat

Official Procedures

The Secretary General (SG) heads the United Nations Secretariat, and is selected by the
Security Council, with approval from the General Assembly. The next layer of hierarchy
consists of under-secretaries general, who are largely selected by the SG and then appointed
if approved by the General Assembly. The General Assembly also plays a significant role
in determining the number and sphere of influence of under-secretaries. The remaining
approximately 43,000 staff of the Secretariat are appointed by senior Secretariat officials
without direct interaction with the deliberative bodies (Wynes and Zahran, 2011).
Appointment of Secretariat officials is guided by two criteria stated in the Charter of the
United Nations:
The paramount consideration in the employment of the staff and in the determination of the conditions of service shall be the necessity of securing the highest
standards of efficiency, competence, and integrity. Due regard shall be paid to
the importance of recruiting the staff on as wide a geographical basis as possible
(United Nations, 1945).
Since 1958, internal documents discussed a desirable range of staff that should come
from each country, a range which would be based on membership (i.e. some minimum number
of positions per country), population, and assessment of dues, with the largest weight on
assessment.5,6 These desirable ranges apply to the total stock of positions and do not consider
seniority; in practice, it has been observed that the nationality distribution of senior positions
5

From about 1960 to 1975, the relative target weights on membership, population and assessment were
20%, 9%, 71%. The formula has changed several times since then; current documents suggest respective
weights of 40%, 5% and 55%.
6
Membership dues owed by members of the United Nations are proportional to their GDP, with a progressive ceiling to lower the cost of membership to poor nations and limit one nation (the United States)
from paying too large a share. Many nations have failed to pay their full dues at various times; staffing
formulae are based on assessment, not on actual dues paid.

11

departs more significantly from the desirable range than the distribution of all positions, a
situation which the General Assembly has on occasion discussed (Meron, 1982).

2.2.2

Unofficial Jockeying

It is widely recognized that nations lobby to place their staff in senior positions in the Secretariat. Indeed, there is a 600-page book on the subject, titled Politics of Staffing the
United Nations Secretariat (Ameri, 1996).7 The appointment of Secretaries General, which
takes place approximately every ten years, is watched carefully by international analysts.
The selection of under-secretaries was an important arena of conflict in the Cold War, and
frequently discussed in the General Assembly, with Soviets pushing for a transparent division of powers with three under-secretaries representing respectively the Western Block, the
Eastern Block and the Non-aligned countries (Reymond, 1967). Such a division would make
more explicit the allegiance that Secretariat staff often retained to their home countries.
The U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence routinely published a report entitled,
Soviet Presence in the U.N. Secretariat, (United States Senate, 1985) which claimed,
Soviets in the Secretariat function reasonably well as adjuncts of the Soviet Foreign Ministry and intelligence services [...] The 800 Soviets assigned to the United
Nations as international civil servants report directly to the Soviet missions and
are part of an organization managed by the Soviet Foreign Ministry, intelligence
services, and the Central Committee of the Communist Party. [... They] are
involved in shaping conference papers, controlling the flow of news to staff and
delegations, influencing delegations seeking Secretariat advice, and aiding Soviet
diplomats during conference and other deliberations. [...] Approximately one
fourth of the Soviets in the U.N. Secretariat are intelligence officers and many
more are co-opted by the KGB.
7

Additional references include Finger (1980) and Reymond (1967).

12

The Committee Report implies that the United States did not exert the same measure
of control over Americans at the United Nations; nevertheless the importance of placing
nationals of aligned countries in senior positions is evident.

Data and Specifications

3.1

Constructing the Database of Secretariat Positions

We compiled data on Secretariat staffing from the annual Yearbook of the United Nations,
which summarizes the annual activities of all the organs of the U.N., and was published
from 1947 to 2007.8 The Appendix of the U.N. Yearbook lists the names and titles of the
most senior staff in the Secretariat and Specialized Agencies, beginning with the Secretary
General. The number of Secretariat positions listed in a given year ranges from 26 in 1950
to just over 100 in 2000.
Using the name and position of each person listed, we researched their nationality, drawing on directories (such as Whos Who in the United Nations, 1975; 1992; 1951), media
articles and other historical documents. Figure 1 displays the number of positions listed
over time, along with the number of those positions for which we were able to verify the
nationality of the position-holder.9
[Figure 1 about here.]
To verify that our list accurately captured the most senior positions in the Secretariat
of the United Nations, and to rank the positions in terms of importance, we hired two
independent experts on the United Nations.10 Both experts confirmed that our list did not
8

The last available copy of this publication is from 2007. It is not clear whether more recent editions are
still forthcoming or whether the United Nations has ceased publication of annual yearbooks.
9
The rise in positions from 1950 to 1980 is likely influenced by a growth in the scope of the United
Nations. However, the decline in positions listed after 2000 likely represents an editorial choice to list fewer
positions, given that the size or scope of the United Nations did not change significantly in this period.
10
Each expert had decades of experience in the U.N. system, and preferred to remain anonymous given
the potential political sensitivity of this study.

13

have significant lacunae, and independently assigned each position a weight on a scale of 1 to
6 reflecting the relative importance of that position. The Secretaries General were assigned
a ranking of 6, the under-secretaries were assigned 5, and so on. Using the mean importance
rank of the two experts, we created a second measure of Secretariat representation, which
is the share of positions held by each nation in a given year, weighted by the importance of
each position held. We rescaled this measure so that it sums to one in each year.
We added several other country-year variables: (i) GDP, population and overseas development assistance (World Development Indicators, Penn World Tables); (ii) stock of people
with tertiary education (Barro and Lee, 2012); (iii) the Worldwide Governance Indicators (of
which freedom from corruption is a component) (Kaufmann et al., 2011); (iv) the Combined
Polity Score measure of democracy from the Polity IV database (Marshall and Jaggers, 2002);
(v) state military expenditure and the Composite Index of National Capability from Correlates of War v. 3.0 (Singer, 1987); and (vi) an annual count of the number of foreign
embassies operated by each country as a measure of national investment in international
diplomacy (the Diplomatic Contacts database from Rhamey et al. (2010)). Finally, we calculated assessments of dues to the United Nations using data on national GDP, population,
U.N. membership and the formulae described in Section 2.2.1.
The governance measure is missing data before 1994, so we impute backward from the
earliest available year to avoid dropping a large number of observations when we include this
variable. Results on corruption are therefore more relevant in the cross section than in the
time series.
[Table 1 about here.]
Table 1 displays summary statistics of all measures used.

14

3.2
3.2.1

Measuring Representation
Measuring Excess Representation

We define a countrys raw representation as the share of Secretariat positions held by that
countrys nationals. We consider an alternate measure that weights each position by the
expert assessment of its importance. We define excess representation as the ratio of a nations
raw representation to its share of world population in a given year. Our reference point is
thus a notion of the United Nations as a kind of global democracy, with each person in the
world equally represented. If representation were equal in this sense, then China and India
would together control more than a third of the positions in the Secretariat, and the measure
of excess representation would be one for all countries.

3.2.2

The Staffing Mandate of the United Nations and Other Factors Influencing Representation

Two anecdotes from the early years of the United Nations (both from Ameri 1996) highlight
the challenges of achieving fair geographic coverage of top officials. In the early years of the
United Nations, citizens of the United States held a disproportionate share of positions in
the Secretariatfrom 20-25% of all senior positions in the 1950s. A factor contributing to
this was that the location of headquarters in New York made it far more difficult to recruit
nationals of other countries.11
A second widely observed anecdote in early staffing decisions was that many nations had a
scarcity of individuals with sufficient education and experience to able to fill a senior position
at the United Nations. Governments were often invited to recommend their nationals for
senior positions, but declined to do so on the grounds that they did not have capable staff
11

It would be incorrect to view this as a historical accident; the locating of U.N. headquarters in New York
occurred because of the United States position as the dominant world power; the location of main offices of
U.N. agencies is one way in which nations exert influence over the organization.

15

to spare.
The main criteria for staff selection, as inscribed in the Charter, are efficiency, competence, and integrity, with an equitable geographic distribution being a secondary factor.
Our data do not allow us to see the caliber of individual bureaucrats in the Secretariat.
However, we can to some extent control for the pool of available candidates from each country with country-level measures that proxy for the staff selection criteria. To proxy for
efficiency and competence, we use a measure of human capital, or the number of people with
tertiary education (often a prerequisite for employment at the United Nations). To proxy
for integrity, we use the freedom from corruption measure from the Worldwide Governance
Indicators (Kaufmann et al., 2011). The latter is motivated by Fisman and Miguel (2007),
who found that U.N. diplomats law abidance in New York was correlated with the corruption level in their home countries. Finally, we include the assessment of dues, given its key
role in the desirable representation formulae.
Our model takes the form:
Yit = 0 + 1 P OP U LAT IONit + 2 EDU Cit + 3 CORRU P T IONit + 4 DU ESit + Xit + it ,
(1)

Where Yit is a measure of representation, P OP U LAT ION , EDU C, CORRU P T ION and
DU ES reflect the staffing mandate of the United Nations, and Xit is a vector of additional
factors that we would like to test, which are wealth (GDP per capita), traditional international power (military spending), diplomacy (as proxied by the number of embassies run by
countries), and democracy.
A desirable empirical specification should have two main characteristics. First, all predictive factors should be treated as zero sum, since the share of Secretariat positions is
also zero sum. In other words, increasing a countrys population by 10% should not affect our prediction of that countrys representation if the population of all other countries
has also increased by the same 10%. To achieve this, we rescale all observations on Secre-

16

tariat positions, population, assessments of dues, human capital stock, military spending and
diplomatic contacts to convert these to shares of the world total of each value. For instance,
instead of gross military spending, we use share of global military spending. The remaining
variables (democracy, freedom from corruption, GDP per capita) do not have a notion of a
global total; to make these zero sum, we rescale them so that observations each year have
a mean of zero and a standard deviation of one. Table 1 shows descriptive statistics of both
untransformed and transformed variables.
Second, we need to control for the fact that many of the national variables we describe
exhibit significant serial correlation, as do positions in the Secretariat, since they are often
held for multiple years. To avoid overcounting highly similar observations, we cluster our
standard errors by country in our time series regressions, and by decade in our country fixed
effect regressions.

4
4.1

Who Runs the United Nations?

Descriptive Statistics

Figure 2 shows the excess representation of the United States, Germany, Russia, China, and
Japan. As discussed above, the United States had a disproportionate share of positions at
the inception of the United Nations, a share which fell significantly but then stabilized in
the 1980s. Japan and Germany had little representation following the end of the second
world war, but have steadily risen in prominence, surpassing the United States in excess
representation by the 1980s.12 The Soviet Union was almost never overrepresented at the
United Nations, in part because of Stalins significant efforts to undermine the institution
in the early years (Finger, 1975). The fall of the Soviet Union led to a further drop in
12
This timing coincides with Japans internationalization policies during the Nakasone administration,
which aimed to increase Japans role in global affairs (George, 1993).

17

Russias influence in the Secretariat. China has been and continues to be dramatically
underrepresented in the U.N. Secretariatwith an average over all years of only 1% of
senior positions in the Secretariat.
[Figure 2 about here.]
Figure 3 shows the world population share and share of U.N. Secretariat positions of
the Western European powers and their offshoots Canada, the United States, New Zealand,
and Australia. While the Western countries share of world population and GDP have been
steadily declining since the 1960s, their control over the U.N. Secretariat has been largely
unmitigated; in 2007 they continued to hold 45% of Secretariat positions, while their world
population share has fallen from 18% to 12%. This graph shows that in spite of the widely
discussed rise to international prominence of middle income nations like the BRICs, Western
Europe and its offshoots have not lost control over this key U.N. body.
[Figure 3 about here.]
Figure 4 displays scatterplots of the share of positions in the Secretariat against log
population and log assessment.13 There is a clear upward sloping relationship in both graphs,
but many countries are far from the 45 degree line. The R2 measure for the regression of
Secretariat share on population share is 0.11, while for representation on assessment of dues
it is 0.70. In the bivariate analysis, payment of dues appears to be a much better indicator
of power in the Secretariat than population.
[Figure 4 about here.]
Table 2 presents excess representation in the Secretariat, by country, averaged over all
years.14 Excess representation is defined as the ratio of a countrys share of Secretariat
positions to its share of world population, and is proportional to a countrys vertical distance
13

We use logs on the X axis to display small and large countries on the same graph. We must then use a
log scale for the Y axis in order for the 45 degree line (which indicates a notion of equal representation)
to be straight.
14
Appendix Table A1 lists countries ranked by their total number of senior Secretariat positions, without
taking population into account.

18

from the 45 degree line in the top panel of Figure 4. Nordic countries dominate the list,
occupying 4 of the top 6 positions. Since 1950, Sweden has had on average 0.1% of world
population and 0.8% of world GDP, but has held 4.3% of senior positions in the Secretariat,
including a Secretary-General from 1953-61.15 Western nations are also overrepresented,
with the United States, Canada, and Great Britain all overrepresented by a factor of 2 or
greater. Large, poor nations are significantly underrepresented; India, China, and Indonesia
each have a world population share four or more times greater than their Secretariat position
share.
[Table 2 about here.]
The high ranks of the Nordic countries are worth examining further. First, we note that
the top six countries by representation are all small democracies. This is consistent with literature on small, open economies which finds that they take on additional insurance against
negative shocks given their dependence on outside factors. These countries tend to have
democratic corporatist relationships between business and labor (Katzenstein, 1985), larger
governments (Rodrik, 2014), and strategic investments in security-focused international organizations (Mosser, 2000). That small, open economies would seek a greater role at the
United Nations should is thus not surprising: investing in international institutions may be
their best route to global influence.
Second, there may be a global perception that Nordic bureaucrats can be trusted to
behave honestly and fairly.16 The high incidence of Nordic countries thus may not be the
result of an exertion of power on their part, but a consequence of their fairness and reliability.
15

These measures are not weighted by the expert measures of position importance, so we treat the SG
equally to all other senior positions. Using the importance-weighted measures does not substantively change
the list.
16
Indeed, this has been a common reaction to presentations of this paper. It is also consistent with
international surveys. Four of the top five countries by secretariat representation are among the 10 least
corrupt according to Transparency International (2006). Bureaucrats from these countries appear wellbehaved as well, at least by the Fisman and Miguel (2007) measure: 9 of the top 10 countries by secretariat
representation are among the 20 countries with the fewest parking tickets per diplomat.

19

Nevertheless, finding themselves well represented in these senior positions gives the Nordic
countries an opportunity to exercise power over international institutions; they may find it
to their benefit to continue to cultivate a reputation for impartiality. After all, the ability
to shape the preferences of other nations is one of the faces of power (Barnett and Duvall,
2005; Lukes, 1974); the other nations may not even realize the power they have bestowed on
the Nordics.

4.2

Evaluating the Staffing Mandate

Table 3 presents estimates from a time series regression of annual Secretariat representation
on population, human capital, freedom from corruption, and assessment of dues to the
United Nations as described by Equation 1. An observation is a country-year, and standard
errors are clustered at the country level. Columns 1 through 4 add independent variables
sequentially. Column 5 repeats the estimation with all variables included, but rather than a
count of senior positions, the outcome variable weights each position by the importance of
that position, as judged by a third party expert. This last measure is rescaled so the total
number of positions remains unity.
[Table 3 about here.]
The first row further weakens perceptions of the United Nations as a global democracy.
The coefficient on population is insignificant across all four columns. Human capital enters
positively with statistical significance. A 1 percentage point increase in a nations share of
the global stock of people with tertiary education is associated with a 0.2 to 0.4 percentage
point increase in representation in the Secretariat.17 The freedom from corruption indicator
17

One might be worried that our proxy of candidate qualification with tertiary education does not adequately take into account quality differences in education across countries. (We thank Michael Clemens
for this suggestion.) The best measure of quality differentials is the OECDas Program for International
Student Assessment (PISA) testing of 15-year olds, first performed in 2000 in 32 countries; the 2012 tests
included 65 countries. While the results cannot be applied to much of our sample given the short history
of testing and narrowness of the sample, it is not obvious anecdotally that we have a large omission. Some
of the best testing countries in 2012 like Singapore, Japan, and Vietnam are noticeably absent from the

20

is also positive and significant in all specifications: countries with low corruption and good
governance are better represented in the Secretariat. Assessment of dues also enters positively and significantly. Column 5 indicates that these results are robust to using importance
weighted measures of Secretariat representation.
The results lend weight to the importance of the staffing mandate of the United Nations,
suggesting that the supply of individuals of high competence and integrity plays a key role
in the composition of the U.N. Secretariat, as does the assessment of dues.
The analysis thus far uses both cross-sectional and time series variation in representation.
Table 4 presents estimates from a model with country fixed effects, and thus controls for
any unobserved country-level variables (but also eliminates the interesting variation between
countries). The results on population, assessment of dues and human capital are sustained;
the effect of corruption is not visible in the time series alone, likely because it is available
for only a third of the years and does not change significantly over time.
[Table 4 about here.]
We now examine the role of factors beyond the official staffing mandate of the United
Nations.

4.3

Factors Beyond the Staffing Mandate

Table 5 shows the relationship between Secretariat representation and per capita wealth,
military spending, investment in diplomacy, and democracy, controlling for the variables
used in the staffing mandate regressions above. Human capital, military expenditure, GDP
and assessment of dues are all highly colinear, which makes it difficult to separate their
individual effects.18 Columns 1 through 3 show that these variables are positive, significant
top ranks in U.N. Secretariat. Conversely, among the ten most over-represented countries in the Secretariat
(Table 2) only third-ranked Finland is a top-ten education quality performer in the much smaller sample of
PISA-scoring countries.
18
The correlation coefficients are GDP,dues = 0.98; dues,tertiaryed = 0.92; dues,militaryshare =
0.89; militaryshare,tertiaryed = 0.84. Note that the per capita measures are less highly correlated, but as

21

and very similar in magnitude when included separately.

Diplomacy enters with positive and highly significant point estimates, suggesting that
investment in soft power is a key factor in determining representation in the U.N. Secretariat.
A 1 percentage point increase in a countrys share of the worlds embassies is associated with
a 0.5 to 0.7 percentage point increase in Secretariat representation.
Democracy and wealth are also positively correlated with representation, but not significant in all specifications.19
[Table 5 about here.]
When assessment, human capital stock and military spending are included together (column 4), the education variable dominates, but we are reluctant to infer too much from this
since it is based on a small amount of variation between these three measures.20 When
fixed effects are included (Appendix Table A2), results are upheld for all variables except
diplomacy, which does not change significantly over time.21
Table 6 shows how the correlates of U.N. Secretariat representation have changed over
time, by estimating the main specification separately for each decade. Estimates are noisier
due to the smaller sample sizes, but we find that diplomacy has a consistent and large
effect over time. Population and freedom from corruption are insignificant in all decades.
With the same qualification about multicollinearity as above, among assessment (GDP),
human capital, and military spending, we find that human capital is more important in the
1970s and 1980s while assessment plays a larger role in the 1990s and 2000s. Meanwhile,
democracy wanes in importance while wealth rises in importance. Taken together, these
described above the gross measures are more appropriate to our specification.
19
As above, results are robust to the use of the weighted representation measure, as well as to the exclusion
of the United States. These tables are available upon request from the authors.
20
We chose to use the military expenditure measure rather than the widely used Composite Index of
National Capability (CINC) because the latter already includes several variables that are identical or very
highly correlated with population and GDP, which we wish to control for separately. However, our results
are robust to the use of CINC in place of military expenditure share and available upon request.
21
Country fixed effects explain 89% of the variation in diplomatic contacts.

22

results are consistent with the notion that the staff were initially drawn more from educated
democracies, but as global education and governance levels have risen over time, economic
strength has played a larger role.
[Table 6 about here.]

Extension: Power, Alliances, and the Pax Americana

In the struggle to control international institutions, as in military matters, alliances are

important. Consider the campaign to prevent global warming. Countries form coalitions to
advance their shared interests. This suggests we may have a problem of measurement error
if we restrict our attention to a countrys own representation in an international organization
and ignore the combined power of its alliance. Palau, for instance, might be equally satisfied
between holding a Secretariat position itself or having Maldives hold a position, since both
low-lying island nations share the same goal of preventing climate change. The United States
might be content to have Canadians and New Zealanders staff the peacekeeping department,
since their outlook, strategy, and judgment would likely be similar to their own.
We can extend our analysis by taking alliances, or shared preferences, into account. We
use the term alliance loosely, recognizing that our statistical measures can only serve as imperfect proxies for true underlying alliances or coalitions. In this section we will augment the
basic count of Secretariat positions with an alliance-weighted measure. As a demonstration
of the potential to use Secretariat staffing as a measure of power, we consider the case of the
United States.
One of the most public debates in the field of power and international relations is whether
the United States power is in decline. As Joseph Nye wrote in, The Decline and Fall of
Americas Decline and Fall (2011a), Americas decline has been frequently anticipated:

23

first the Soviets in the 1950s and 1960s, then the Japanese in the 1980s, and now the
Chinese have all been predicted to get the better of America. Taking the long view,
Paul Kennedy had predicted decline (1989) but even by 2012 many prominent writers were
unconvinced (Kagan, 2012; Lieber, 2012). A parallel, and sometimes overlapping debate has
been occurring on whether we are in an era of American Empire (Nexon and Wright, 2007).
The breadth of opinions leaves open the question of whether Americas power is in decline,
fluctuating, or indeed in ascent. Our measure of Secretariat representation offers an objective
and consistent methodology for contributing to this debate.
As Figure 2 depicts, the United States was significantly overrepresented in the early years
of the United Nations existence. Its share of positions declined steadily until around 1980,
and has since remained relatively constant and modest. At first glance this appears to be a
fall in institutional power from 1950 through 1980, as other nations, notably Germany and
Japan in the figure, increased in prominence. This is consistent with the Kennedy view.
However, this raw scoring ignores the fact that the United States structured the international system after W.W.II to help enforce the so-called Pax Americana. With the United
Nations and the Bretton Woods organizations, the United States, wrote John Ikenberry,
spun a web of institutions that connected other states to an emerging American-dominated
economic and security order (Ikenberry, 2001). The plan may never have been to dominate
the individual institutions once they matured but rather to share them with other nations
who subscribed to the American worldview. We must thus consider the possibility that
U.S. allies might have held, or gained ground, in the Secretariat even as the United States
individual representation has fallen, as suggested by the steady share of positions held by
Western countries, visible in Figure 3. If these countries international bureaucrats share
American objectives and preferences, then it may be that the interests of the United States
are no less represented in the international system than they were in 1960 when U.S. staff
representation was at its peak.

24

While this view seems plausible for the Cold War years, the notion of a Western Europe and offshoot alliance in recent international affairs is less obvious. The United States
often has significant disagreement with European countries in matters of international organization, with Americans becoming increasingly unilateralist and Europeans multilateralists
(Rubenfeld, 2004). Our data can shed light on these issues.

5.1

Alliance-Weighted Representation

Taking alliances into account allows us to more comprehensively answer the question of
whether the United States is in decline, by examining whether closely allied nations have
acquired the positions that America has lost.
Measuring alliances as they relate to the multifaceted job of running the United Nations
is not easy. Restricting our attention to data that could be analyzed in panel form, we
could use several possible proxiesany of which could be used in the methodology that we
describe below. We elect to proxy preference similarity by focusing on U.N. voting records,
as we think it comes the closest to measuring the relevant dimension of alliances for the
management of the Secretariat. We repeated the exercise below using common membership
in intergovernmental organizations (Pevehouse et al., 2004) as another measure of alliance,
with broadly similar results.22 Other possible variables, such as formal military alliances or
international public opinion data could also be used.
We use U.N. General Assembly voting data (Gartzke, 2006) to generate a unique, dynamic, and synthetic alliance for any country. The assumption behind our formulation is
that bureaucrats from two countries with identical preferences over General Assembly resolutions will behave in the same manner if given senior positions in the Secretariat. Alternately,
one country has just as much alliance-weighted representation when its close ally holds a
position as when the country itself does. Pairs of countries with weaker correlations in voting
22

Results available from the authors upon request.

25

behavior receive correspondingly less benefit from each others positions.

We model country js alliance-weighted influence as:

IN F LU EN CEj,t =

P OSIT ION Si,t AF F IN IT Yi,j,t ,

(2)

iI

where P OSIT ION Si,t is the share of positions held by country i at time t and AF F IN IT Yi,j,t
is a measure of the similarity of voting in the General Assembly between countries i and
j in year t, with AF F IN IT Yi,i,t = 1. Specifically, for any given year, AF F IN IT Yi,j =
d
, where d is the number of times that i votes against j, and dmax is the number of
1 2 dmax

General Assembly votes.23 In words, a country js alliance-weighted influence is a weighted

average of the influence of all countries in the world, where the weighting is determined by
how much country j votes like the other countries.
This alliance-weighted measure is slightly unrealistic as an indicator of national power
in that it describes a small country and a large country with very similar voting records
(Iceland and Sweden, for example) as being equally powerful. Surely, Sweden exerts more
control over the United Nations than Iceland. Yet from the perspective of an individual
Swede or Icelander, there is no difference in terms of whether one country or the other is
exercising agency at the U.N.. Moreover, to capture the difference between Iceland and
Sweden here, it would suffice to look at each countrys raw representation in tandem with
their alliance-weighted representation.
The other concern with our approach is that General Assembly voting might not be
an adequate measure of the difference between two countries preferences. There are some
documented weaknesses in such use of the data but it is nonetheless the methodology of
choice in dozens of papers in political science and economics (Voeten, 2013). For those
scholars who would prefer a different dyadic measure of preference similarity, that variable
23

AF F IN IT Y and IN F LU EN CE are thus both bounded between -1 and 1.

26

could be substituted for AF F IN IT Y in equation 2.

Defining the United States as country j, the solid lines in Figure 5 show U.S. influence in
the Secretariat over time (black), along with the unadjusted U.S. Secretariat representation
measure from (gray) Figure 2. The measures track each other until the mid-1960s. From
1965 to 1980, the number of positions held by Americans declines, but Americas allianceweighted representation remains constant, as those positions are filled by American allies.
[Figure 5 about here.]
Around 1980, U.S. alliance-weighted influence falls in the Secretariat and drops below
zero, indicating that the average senior official in the Secretariat is from a nation that is an
opponent of the U.S. rather than an ally. From 1981 to 2007, Secretariat affinity with the
U.S. remains largely negative, with a slight upturn during the Clinton administration and a
monotonic fall during the subsequent Bush years.
These changes in alliance-weighted representation could be driven by either a change in
composition of the Secretariat or a change in General Assembly voting behavior of countries.
In other words, a country loses influence when (i) it or its allies lose Secretariat positions; or
(ii) countries that already have positions become more opposed to the country in question.
We can test between these two alternatives by examining a hypothetical scenario where
alliances have not changed since the 1950s. This scenario is represented by the dashed
line in Figure 5. When we hold alliances constant, the U.S. decline is almost completely
eliminated, indicating that all of the lost American positions were taken by its 1950s allies,
but that these allies no longer share ideology with the United States.
This exercise suggests that U.S. influence in the United Nations has significantly waned
over time, such that the Secretariat is no longer a projection of U.S. power. The mechanisms behind this finding are nevertheless consistent with the idea that the characteristics
of international organizations persist beyond the conditions of their origination (Keohane,
1984; Ikenberry, 2001). But this is not to say that the balance of power in those organiza-

27

tions is static; the Secretariat is as pro-Western as ever, but the main beneficiaries are the
former allies of the United States rather than America itself. In assisting in the creation
of an organization that would be dominated by the West rather than dominated America (Ikenberry, 2001), the United States in the 1940s may have constrained its own future
administrations to be more Wilsonian than they would otherwise be.

5.2

Measuring Institutional Bias

We have shown a secular decline in U.S. power as expressed by the staffing of the Secretariat
from 1950 to the present. It remains possible that the Secretariat has a pro-U.S. bias relative
to the world, even while the influence measure of the United States is negative. In other
words, a U.N. Secretariat that is opposed to the United States might be even more opposed
to the United States if it represented all countries equally.
We extend our methodology to measure the international bias of an institution, defined
as the difference between the institution-country affinity measure and a population-weighted
measure of the worlds affinity for the country.24
First, we create a variable analogous to IN F LU EN CE above but instead of weighting
with Secretariat positions, we weight with world population. This gives us a populationweighted measure of the affinity of the world for a given country:

OP IN IONU SA,t =

P OP U LAT IONi,t AF F IN IT Yi,U SA,t ,

(3)

iI

where P OP U LAT IONi,t is country is share of world population at time t. This measure
describes what the variable IN F LU EN CE would be if the nationality distribution in the
24

The use of population weights implies that our reference point is a situation where all people in the
world are represented equally. Our premise is that any departure from such a point is a reflection of national
influence over the Secretariat, which is exactly what we want to measure. If we were to use a residual
from one of the regressions in the previous section, we would be omitting the effect on power of any of the
regression variables in the analysis.

28

Secretariat matched that of the world. We then define the bias of an institutionin our case
the U.N. Secretariattoward the views of a country as the difference between the countrys
affinity with the institution and the countrys affinity with the world:

BIASU SA,t = IN F LU EN CEU SA,t OP IN IONU SA,t .

(4)

We plot BIAS for the United States over time in Figure 6. The figure shows that relative to
the world as a whole, the U.N. Secretariat has been consistently biased toward the United
States. If the staffing of the Secretariat were proportional to national populations, the United
States would have even less influence over the institution. In other words, despite increased
U.S. isolation (as expressed by voting in the General Assembly), the United States benefits
from a relatively friendly Secretariat. The U.S. has lost influence in the U.N. Secretariat
since 1980, but it has fallen even further in the eyes of the world. The Pax Americana seems
to benefit the United States after all.
[Figure 6 about here.]
This methodology can be used to examine the bias of any international organization,
given data on the nationalities of key officials. As an example, we analyze the bureaucratic
leadership of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) during the 1970s and early 1980s. This U.N. specialized agency was only the second
U.N. agency from which the United States withdrew, in 198425 (Joyner and Lawson, 1986).
UNESCOs General Conference regularly adopted anti-Israel resolutions, sponsored disarmament activities that the Americans thought were biased in favor of Soviet positions, and
promoted restrictions on the freedom of the press through the controversial New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) (Jacobson, 1984; Puchala, 1990). UNESCOs
Secretariat played a decisive role in the organizations stance and direction (Joyner and Law25

The U.S. withdrew from the International Labor Organization from 1978-80.

29

son, 1986). In Figure 7 we compute UNESCOs pro-U.S. bias and compare it with the U.N.
Secretariat through 1988, the last year for which we have leadership data on UNESCO. As
can be seen in the figure, UNESCO is notably less pro-American than the Secretariat. This
imbalance would be significantly greater if not for a single directorship held by the United
States for most of this period, a position which likely played a role in scuttling the NWICO
effort.
[Figure 7 about here.]

Conclusion

In 1946, Norwegian Trygve Lie was made the first Secretary General of the United Nations,
in part because of the strong Soviet opinion that the position should go to someone who was
neither British, French, nor American (Thant and Scott, 2007). The Nordic countries have
since continued to dominate the senior ranks of the United Nations, perhaps in part because
their citizens are perceived as neutral and trustworthy. Whatever the reason, it is perhaps
no accident that the bureaucratic arms of the United Nations tend toward an ideology that
is not dissilimar to that of the Nordic nations. To the extent that international institutions
constrain the actions of states, the Nordic countries are in a far more influential international
position than their economic or military strength would suggest.
We have argued that countries with greater ability to influence international organizations
will be more successful in placing their nationals into senior positions, and that this is an
increasingly important aspect of state power. Since these positions are scarce and central
to the operation of the United Nations, the resulting allocation of senior positions gives us
information on countries ability to compete for influence in the international system. In spite
of the modesty of its setting, this measure of power has some advantages over traditional
capability-based measures.

30

We find that democracies, countries that invest in bilateral diplomacy, and economically/militarily powerful countries are the most effective at placing staff in the Secretariat
even after controlling for monetary contributions to the U.N. and the staffing mandate of
competence and integrity. This suggests that exercising influence via a multilateral institution is a complement to exercising it through traditional bilateral diplomacy. Examining
our measure over time, we find that Western Europe and its offshoots have retained control
over a disproportionate share of positions in the Secretariat, even while their share of global
GDP and population has fallen.
Going further, we put forward a measure of representation that takes shared preferences
between countries into account. We examine the alliance-weighted representation of the
United States and find that American influence has been in decline since the formation of
the United Nations, especially since 1980, and that the growing ideological distance between
the United States and its 1950 allies plays an important role in this decline. However, the
Secretariat remains weakly biased toward the interests of the United States, when compared
with the interests of the world as a whole.
This paper is not a conclusive operationalization of power, or a comprehensive answer
to the question of who runs the world. Rather, it attempts to plumb the rich information
hidden in plain sight, which is the national composition of the senior staff of the worlds
most global institution. This information offers a quantifiable approach to help understand
how nations interact in a globalized context.

31

Table 1
Summary statistics
Variable
Number of senior Secretariat positions
Share of senior Secretariat positions
GDP (million USD)
GDP share
Population (millions)
Population share
Population with higher ed (million)
Human capital share
Inverse corruption index
Inverse corruption (rescaled)
UN Fee Assessment
Military expenditure (thousand USD)
Military spending share
Democracy (Polity)
Democracy (Polity, rescaled)
GDP Per Capita
GDP Per Capita (rescaled)
Diplomatic contacts
Diplomatic contacts (share)

Mean Standard Deviation

0.4
1.0
0.01
0.02
128,862
640,398
0.01
0.03
29.9
103.5
0.01
0.02
0.72
3.11
0.01
0.03
-0.1
1.0
0.0
1.0
0.01
0.03
4,510
24,619
0.01
0.04
0.3
7.5
-0.0
1.0
3,789
7,649
-0.0
1.0
36
29
0.01
0.01

32

Min
Max
N
0.0
11.0
8933
0.00
0.28
8933
30
13,983,709 6120
0.00
0.45
6120
0.1
1,311.0
8519
0.00
0.23
8519
0.00
56.16
7338
0.00
0.43
7338
-2.2
2.6
1198
-2.0
2.7
1198
0.00
0.33
6120
0
552,568
6732
0.00
0.52
6732
-10.0
10.0
6857
-2.2
1.7
6857
38
82,020
6120
-0.9
6.0
6120
0
156
6080
0.00
0.04
6080

Table 2
Secretariat representation, all years, excess over population
Rank
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
22
24
29
36
38
44
46
51
52
53
56
62
63
64
66
67
68
69
75
76
78
81
83
85
86
89
90
91
92
94
95
96
96
96
96

Country
Sweden
Norway
Finland
New Zealand
Ireland
Denmark
Panama
Jamaica
Switzerland
Uruguay
Sierra Leone
Jordan
Canada
Ghana
Botswana
Greece
Chile
Austria
Tunisia
Senegal
Australia
United Kingdom
Argentina
France
United States
Italy
Egypt
Colombia
Pakistan
Poland
Myanmar
South Africa
Germany
Iran
Philippines
Japan
Nigeria
Russian Federation
Sudan
Tanzania
Mexico
Spain
Brazil
Turkey
Korea, Rep.
India
Indonesia
Bangladesh
Thailand
Ethiopia
China
Congo, Dem. Rep.
Romania
Ukraine
Vietnam

Share of positions
0.0428
0.0180
0.0206
0.0114
0.0109
0.0150
0.0050
0.0047
0.0118
0.0053
0.0056
0.0037
0.0382
0.0178
0.0015
0.0149
0.0161
0.0117
0.0083
0.0068
0.0150
0.0581
0.0224
0.0343
0.1292
0.0264
0.0173
0.0082
0.0259
0.0100
0.0085
0.0060
0.0158
0.0072
0.0085
0.0206
0.0131
0.0237
0.0030
0.0029
0.0091
0.0048
0.0131
0.0045
0.0034
0.0447
0.0055
0.0032
0.0008
0.0005
0.0086
0.0000
0.0000
0.0000
0.0000

Share of world population

0.0015
0.0007
0.0009
0.0006
0.0006
0.0009
0.0005
0.0004
0.0012
0.0005
0.0007
0.0008
0.0051
0.0032
0.0003
0.0018
0.0025
0.0013
0.0016
0.0016
0.0031
0.0097
0.0061
0.0097
0.0464
0.0094
0.0115
0.0065
0.0227
0.0063
0.0077
0.0072
0.0135
0.0105
0.0128
0.0208
0.0205
0.0240
0.0057
0.0056
0.0161
0.0066
0.0286
0.0109
0.0077
0.1670
0.0337
0.0231
0.0102
0.0108
0.2075
0.0084
0.0037
0.0081
0.0128

33

Excess Representation
21.67
18.69
17.90
15.97
13.67
12.43
11.68
9.72
7.93
7.68
7.44
7.27
6.93
6.75
6.63
6.62
6.38
6.38
5.70
5.27
4.55
4.28
3.49
2.72
2.46
2.00
1.70
1.39
1.37
1.23
1.14
0.95
0.84
0.82
0.79
0.78
0.78
0.74
0.66
0.66
0.63
0.57
0.49
0.44
0.42
0.29
0.17
0.16
0.08
0.05
0.04
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00

Table 3
Correlates of U.N. Secretariat representation

Population share

(1)
0.211
(0.141)

Human capital share

Inverse corruption (rescaled)
UN Fee Assessment
Constant

0.005
(0.001)***
N
8519
r2
0.08

p < 0.10, p < 0.05, p < 0.01

(2)
-0.005
(0.065)
0.398
(0.014)***

(3)
(4)
0.011
0.018
(0.069)
(0.077)
0.370
0.168
(0.014)***
(0.110)
0.004
0.003
(0.001)*** (0.001)***
0.259
(0.142)*
0.004
0.004
0.004
(0.001)*** (0.001)*** (0.001)***
7306
7170
5464
0.47
0.52
0.55

(5)
0.008
(0.075)
0.229
(0.089)**
0.003
(0.001)***
0.217
(0.115)*
0.004
(0.001)***
5464
0.57

The table shows coefficients from estimation of Equation 1, with the share of positions in the United Nations
Secretariat as the dependent variable. Each observation is a country-year. Columns 1 through 4 add covariates
sequentially. The dependent variable in column 5 is the share of weighted secretariat representation, with
weights equal to expert rankings of the important of each position. Population, human capital and assessment
of dues are represented as world shares. The freedom from corruption index is rescaled to have a mean of 0
and standard deviation of 1 in each year. Standard errors are clustered by country.

34

Table 4
Correlates of U.N. Secretariat representation (Country Fixed Effects)

Population share

(1)
0.835
(0.719)

Human capital share

(2)
-0.043
(0.555)
0.594
(0.137)***

(3)
-0.021
(0.564)
0.621
(0.140)***
0.000
(0.001)

7306
0.69

7170
0.69

Inverse corruption (rescaled)

UN Fee Assessment
N
8519
r2
0.65

p < 0.10, p < 0.05, p < 0.01

(4)
0.524
(0.581)
0.405
(0.118)***
-0.000
(0.001)
0.509
(0.127)***
5464
0.72

(5)
0.402
(0.534)
0.474
(0.115)***
0.000
(0.001)
0.473
(0.109)***
5464
0.73

The table shows coefficients from estimation of Equation 1, with the share of positions in the United
Nations Secretariat as the dependent variable, and country fixed effects. Each observation is a countryyear. Columns 1 through 4 add covariates sequentially. The dependent variable in column 5 is the share
of weighted secretariat representation, with weights equal to expert rankings of the important of each
position. Population, human capital and assessment of dues are represented as world shares. The freedom
from corruption index is rescaled to have a mean of 0 and standard deviation of 1 in each year. Standard
errors are clustered by country-decade pairs.

35

Table 5
Additional Correlates of U.N. Secretariat Representation

Population share
Human capital share

(1)
-0.009
(0.054)
0.259
(0.017)***

(2)
0.039
(0.066)

(3)
0.029
(0.075)

UN Fee Assessment

0.289
(0.058)***

Military spending share

0.217
(0.018)***
-0.000
-0.001
(0.001)
(0.001)
0.002
0.002
(0.001)
(0.001)**
0.529
0.761
(0.157)*** (0.169)***
0.001
0.002
(0.001)
(0.001)**
0.001
0.001
(0.001)
(0.001)
5023
4937
0.51
0.51

Inverse corruption (rescaled)

-0.000
(0.001)
GDP Per Capita (rescaled)
0.002
(0.001)**
Diplomatic contacts (share)
0.676
(0.163)***
Democracy (Polity, rescaled)
0.001
(0.001)
Constant
0.001
(0.001)
N
4615
r2
0.54

p < 0.10, p < 0.05, p < 0.01

(4)
-0.007
(0.056)
0.239
(0.073)***
0.011
(0.088)
0.012
(0.051)
-0.000
(0.001)
0.002
(0.001)*
0.667
(0.159)***
0.001
(0.001)
0.001
(0.001)
4552
0.53

The table shows coefficients from estimation of Equation 1, with the share of positions in
the United Nations Secretariat as the dependent variable. Each observation is a countryyear. Columns 1 through 3 separately include the highly colinear Assessment of Dues, Share
of Tertiary Educated Population and Share of Military Spending. Column 4 adds a control
for share of all UN secretariat staff (i.e. not only senior), a variable which we have for only
2008. Column 5 includes the three colinear controls together. Population, human capital,
assessment of dues, diplomatic contacts and military spending are represented as world shares.
The freedom from corruption index, Polity score and per capita wealth are rescaled to have a
mean of 0 and standard deviation of 1 in each year. Standard errors are clustered by country.

36

Table 6
Coefficients on Secretariat Representation Over Time
1960
1970
1980
1990
Population share
1.255
0.303
0.540
0.464
(0.411)*** (0.162)* (0.146)*** (0.255)*
Population Share2
-6.333
-1.640
-2.238
-2.138
(1.921)*** (0.744)** (0.653)*** (1.109)*
Human capital share
-0.330
0.400
0.131
-0.068
(0.258)
(0.088)***
(0.121)
(0.132)
Inverse corruption (rescaled)
-0.001
0.001
0.000
-0.000
(0.001)
(0.001)
(0.001)
(0.001)
UN Fee Assessment
-0.039
-0.385
-0.057
0.164
(0.219)
(0.063)***
(0.087)
(0.065)**
GDP Per Capita (rescaled)
0.005
0.000
0.003
0.003
(0.003)**
(0.001)
(0.002)
(0.001)**
Military spending share
0.658
0.173
0.014
0.033
(0.281)**
(0.108)
(0.072)
(0.081)
Diplomatic contacts (share)
0.094
0.733
0.287
0.577
(0.271)
(0.219)***
(0.205)
(0.219)***
Democracy (Polity, rescaled)
0.001
0.002
0.002
0.001
(0.001)
(0.001)** (0.001)***
(0.001)
Constant
0.002
0.001
0.003
0.000
(0.002)
(0.001)
(0.002)*
(0.001)
N
712
927
974
1117
r2
0.73
0.61
0.49
0.51

p < 0.10, p < 0.05, p < 0.01

2000
0.356
(0.287)
-1.767
(1.360)
-0.083
(0.139)
0.002
(0.001)*
0.249
(0.103)**
0.002
(0.002)
0.026
(0.045)
0.466
(0.211)**
-0.001
(0.001)
0.001
(0.001)
822
0.58

The table shows coefficients from estimation of Equation 1, with the share of positions in the United Nations
Secretariat as the dependent variable, and the sample split by decade. Each observation is a country-year.
Population, human capital, assessment of dues, diplomatic contacts and military spending are represented
as world shares. The freedom from corruption index, Polity score and per capita wealth are rescaled to have
a mean of 0 and standard deviation of 1 in each year. Standard errors are clustered by country.

37

Secretariat Positions
50
100

150

Figure 1
Number of positions listed and identified in U.N. Yearbook

1950

1960

1970

1980
Year

Total

1990

2000

2010

Known Nationality

The figure shows the number of positions listed in the Appendix of the U.N. Yearbook, Key
Staff of the U.N. Secretariat, along with the number of those position-holders that were
matched to nationalities. Our main measure of representation is the share of positions held
by each nation in a given year.

38

8
0

8
4
0

4
2
0

United Kingdom

1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

Russia

United States

6
0

6
4
0

4
2
0

1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

Japan

1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

(West) Germany

China

Figure 2
Secretariat Representation of World Powers Over Time

1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

The figure shows annual excess representation in the United Nations Secretariat of selected
world powers over time. The y axis is excess representation, defined as a countrys share of
senior Secretariat positions divided by a countrys share of world population.

39

.2

.4

.6

.8

Figure 3
Secretariat and Population Share of Western Europe and Offshoots

1950

1960

1970

1980
Year

UN Secretariat Share

1990

2000

2010

Population Share

The figure shows, over time, the share of senior positions in the United Nations Secretariat
held by Western Europe and its offshoots (United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand),
and the world population share of these same powers.

40

Figure 4
Secretariat representation vs. population and GDP

.2

45 degree line
Rsquared: 0.11

Share of secretariat positions

.01
.05 .1

USA

GBR
SWE

FIN
NOR
DNK

IND

CAN

FRA
ITA

ARG
GHA
CHLAUS

EGY

PAK
DEU
NGA

RUS
JPN
BRA

POL
MEX
COLMMR PHL
IRN
ZAF
ESPTUR
KOR

SDN
TZA

CHN
IDN
BGD

THA
ETH

100
Population (millions)

1000

.4

10

.2

45 degree line
Rsquared: 0.71

Share of secretariat positions

.01
.05 .1

USA

GBR
IND

SWE
PAK
GHA

EGY
CHL
NGA
PHL
COL

FIN
NOR
DNK

ARG

POL

BRA
CHN
ESP

TUR
SDN
TZA

JPN
DEU

MEX

IRN
ZAF
IDN

FRA
ITA

RUS
AUS

CAN

KOR

BGD

THA
ETH

.01
.05
Assessment share

.1

.2

.4

The top panel of the figure shows a scatter plot of the average share of secretariat positions held across
all years against the average population of a country in all years. The solid line is not a best fit, but a 45
degree line. Countries above the line are overrepresented in the secretariat relative to their population, while
countries below the solid line are underrepresented. The bottom panel of the figure shows the same plot,
but with assessment of dues to the United Nations on the X axis. For readability, the graphs are presented
on logarithmic scales, and the sample is limited to all countries with population greater than 20 million, as
well as the 20 most countries with the most senior positions in the Secretariat.

41

.5

.05

Alliance

.5

.1
.15
.2
.25
U.S. Share of Positions

.3

Figure 5
Secretariat affinity for USA

1940

1960

1980
Year

2000

2020

U.S. Secretariat Affinity

U.S. Secretariat Affinity 1950 Alliances
U.S. Share of Positions

The figure shows how U.S. influence over the United Nations Secretariat (or affinity
between the Secretariat and the United States) has changed over time. The solid gray line
(right axis) shows the share of senior positions in the Secretariat held by Americans. The
solid black line (left axis) describes American influence over the Secretariat, as defined by
Equation 2. The dashed black line (left axis) describes what American influence over the
Secretariat would look like if the affinity between nations remained fixed at its 1950 level.
The affinity measures are based on voting in the U.N. General Assembly.

42

.1

Secretariat Affinity minus World Affinity

.2
.3
.4
.5

Figure 6
Secretariat bias toward USA

1940

1960

1980
Year

2000

2020

The graph shows the extent to which the staffing of the U.N. Secretariat is biased toward
the United States. The y axis measures the difference in each year between the affinity of
the world for the United States (based on population weighting) and the affinity of the U.N.
Secretariat (based on staff positions) for the United States.

43

.1

Bias
.1

.2

.3

Figure 7
U.S. Bias of UNESCO and Secretariat

1970

1975

1980
Year
Secretariat

1985

1990

UNESCO

The graph shows the extent to which the staffing of UNESCO is biased toward the United
States. The y axis measures the difference in each year between the affinity of the world for
the United States (based on population weighting) and the affinity of UNESCO (based on
staff positions) for the United States.

44

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49

Appendix
Table A1
Secretariat representation, average share over all years
Rank
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37

Country Share of positions

United States
0.1292
United Kingdom
0.0581
India
0.0447
Sweden
0.0428
Canada
0.0382
France
0.0343
Italy
0.0264
Pakistan
0.0259
Russian Federation
0.0237
Argentina
0.0224
Finland
0.0206
Japan
0.0206
Norway
0.0180
Ghana
0.0178
Egypt
0.0173
Chile
0.0161
Germany
0.0158
Australia
0.0150
Denmark
0.0150
Greece
0.0149
Netherlands
0.0146
Nigeria
0.0131
Brazil
0.0131
Sri Lanka
0.0125
Taiwan
0.0122
Switzerland
0.0118
Austria
0.0117
New Zealand
0.0114
Ireland
0.0109
Poland
0.0100
Mexico
0.0091
Peru
0.0091
China
0.0086
Philippines
0.0085
Myanmar
0.0085
Tunisia
0.0083

50

Table A1
Secretariat representation, average share over all years
Rank
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75

Country Share of positions

Colombia
0.0082
Iran
0.0072
Algeria
0.0071
Belgium
0.0070
Senegal
0.0068
Czech Republic
0.0067
Venezuela
0.0065
South Africa
0.0060
Sierra Leone
0.0056
Cameroon
0.0055
Indonesia
0.0055
Uruguay
0.0053
Burundi
0.0052
Panama
0.0050
Niger
0.0050
Spain
0.0048
Guatemala
0.0048
Iraq
0.0047
Jamaica
0.0047
Somalia
0.0047
Turkey
0.0045
Jordan
0.0037
Ecuador
0.0037
Malaysia
0.0036
Yemen
0.0035
Korea, Rep.
0.0034
Bangladesh
0.0032
Burkina Faso
0.0032
Sudan
0.0030
Hungary
0.0029
Tanzania
0.0029
Nepal
0.0028
Haiti
0.0028
Costa Rica
0.0021
Syria
0.0020
Singapore
0.0020
Mali
0.0018
Uganda
0.0017

51

Table A1
Secretariat representation, average share over all years
Rank
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
97
97
97
97
97
97
97
97
97
97
97
97
97
97
97
97

Country Share of positions

Portugal
0.0016
Bolivia
0.0015
Botswana
0.0015
Bulgaria
0.0014
Saudi Arabia
0.0013
Kenya
0.0012
Slovak Republic
0.0012
Guinea
0.0012
Cuba
0.0012
Zimbabwe
0.0011
Lebanon
0.0010
Namibia
0.0009
Liberia
0.0008
Thailand
0.0008
El Salvador
0.0007
Togo
0.0005
Ethiopia
0.0005
Chad
0.0003
Eritrea
0.0003
Lesotho
0.0002
Mozambique
0.0002
Afghanistan
0.0000
Angola
0.0000
Albania
0.0000
United Arab Emirates
0.0000
Armenia
0.0000
Azerbaijan
0.0000
Benin
0.0000
Bosnia And Herzegovina
0.0000
Belarus
0.0000
Central African Republic
0.0000
Cote DIvoire
0.0000
Congo, Rep.
0.0000
Dominican Republic
0.0000
Estonia
0.0000
Georgia
0.0000
Honduras
0.0000
Croatia
0.0000

52

Table A1
Secretariat representation, average share over all years
Rank
97
97
97
97
97
97
97
97
97
97
97
97
97
97
97
97
97
97
97
97
97
97
97
97
97
97
97
97
97
97
97
97
97
97
97
97

Country Share of positions

Israel
0.0000
Kazakhstan
0.0000
Kyrgyz Republic
0.0000
Cambodia
0.0000
Kosovo
0.0000
Kuwait
0.0000
Laos
0.0000
Libya
0.0000
Lithuania
0.0000
Latvia
0.0000
Morocco
0.0000
Moldova
0.0000
Madagascar
0.0000
Macedonia
0.0000
Mongolia
0.0000
Mauritania
0.0000
Malawi
0.0000
Nicaragua
0.0000
Oman
0.0000
Papua New Guinea
0.0000
Puerto Rico
0.0000
Korea, Dem. Rep.
0.0000
Paraguay
0.0000
Romania
0.0000
Rwanda
0.0000
Serbia
0.0000
Slovenia
0.0000
Tajikistan
0.0000
Turkmenistan
0.0000
Trinidad And Tobago
0.0000
Ukraine
0.0000
Uzbekistan
0.0000
Vietnam
0.0000
West Bank And Gaza
0.0000
Congo, Dem. Rep.
0.0000
Zambia
0.0000

53

Table A2
More correlates of U.N. secretariat representation COUNTRY F.E.
(1)
Population share
0.327
(0.898)
Inverse corruption (rescaled)
0.000
(0.001)
GDP Per Capita (rescaled)
0.002
(0.002)
Diplomatic contacts (share)
0.250
(0.357)
Democracy (Polity, rescaled)
-0.000
(0.001)
UN Fee Assessment
0.494
(0.238)**
Human capital share

(2)
-0.255
(1.015)
0.001
(0.002)
0.004
(0.002)*
0.197
(0.334)
-0.000
(0.001)

0.430
(0.135)***

Military spending share

Constant
N
r2

p < 0.10, p < 0.05, p < 0.01

0.002
(0.007)
5023
0.68

54

(3)
0.357
(1.187)
0.001
(0.001)
0.005
(0.003)*
0.513
(0.496)
-0.000
(0.001)

0.006
(0.005)
4615
0.68

0.080
(0.034)**
0.001
(0.009)
4937
0.66

(4)
-0.224
(0.884)
0.000
(0.002)
0.002
(0.002)
0.166
(0.294)
-0.000
(0.001)
0.233
(0.160)
0.383
(0.186)**
0.124
(0.100)
0.005
(0.005)
4552
0.69